How you know you’re not the narcissist: your proof

Enter gaslighting which we will consider for now to be all the manipulations employed to achieve your disempowerment. These are the tools used to brainwash you into believing you cannot trust your understanding of reality, or your mental health.

When you are in this space you have essentially lost all trust in yourself. You are fully disempowered.

This is precisely where they want you. Doubting all you know of yourself and reality is the foundation needed for the narc to get away with pretty much anything.

Brainwashing

During devaluation, brainwashing tactics come at you hard and fast. Let’s zoom in on a few to see how the narc plants the seed in your mind that you are the narcissist (and waters in well, with lots of fertiliser for vigorous growth).

1.Projection: Denial underpins all narcissist defence mechanisms to protect the false self from confronting any truth about reality. The narcissist unable to accept that they have any flaws, uses projection as a defence mechanism to attribute what is unacceptable in themselves, onto you.

This of course means that narcissistic traits are regularly cited as your defects. Examples of your listed shortcomings might include ‘you’re so selfish’, ‘you think everything should be about you’, ‘you’re so manipulative’ etc.